Paper Cranes
by Hyousetsu
Summary: Drabble collection, various pairings. 03. Ino doesn't love flowers for their beauty. She envies them. A contemplation on the aesthetics of eternal beauty. Mild InoDei.
1. blood made of wood

**Title: **blood made of wood

**Rating: **T

**Characters: **Sasori

**Pairings: **None

**Summary: **Dying means nothing, Sasori thinks, when there's nothing to lose.

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Sasori can feel the blood seeping out of his wound; it's as open and gaping as the sky on a cloudless day. His heart is still faintly beating, like a child afraid of dying; it's small, unsure, so different from how he is in person.

His mind wanders.

He thinks of blood, of the lives he's taken, the years he's lived, the body that is his but not actually _his_ – the moment his parents had fallen down beside him, a silken pool of cedar-smelling hair and entangled limbs, the minute _something _(something) inside him broke-

He still wonders why.

If his chakra had not broken the moment it had, if the cold embrace had not faltered, would he have been where he is now? If there had been no war, no battle, no blood, no pain, no death death death –

Would he be here now?

But that is inconsequential; he thinks as the blood pools in his clothes and wraps him in its strangely comforting hold, because he is here now.

Now.

The feeling of arms around him morph, for a moment of illusion and comfort, into flesh, pulsating against his frame and leaving something intangible in his mouth, in his heart, slowly bleeding to its end-

He remembers Pein, with his promises of peace and war, of power (oh so sinful on his tongue) of warless times and happiness so twisted-

For a moment, he had thought of his parents. His parents, dead and alive and smiling and cold and oh so happy-

Now.

Now, he lays encased in the arms that are made of flesh and not wood, in an embrace of love and not death, in a world where there is only him, them, and something else.

_Would you have done it?_

His heart goes bu-bump, bu-bump. It fades, and that is the end –

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In the end, it doesn't matter.

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**A/N: **Here's my little drabble box reserved for all the junk in my mind. :D Life's been hectic and it feel great to just vent, sometimes, you know? Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the piece, since I had fun writing it - it turned out more macabre than I wanted it to, lol. But still, it's fine, 'cuz it describes one take of the way Sasori thinks about his parent's passing and his choice to join Akatsuki.

Have a nice day!


	2. beauty of eternity

**Title:** beauty of eternity

**Rating: **T

**Characters:** Sasori, Deidara

**Pairings:** Mild SasoDei, if you look closely enough.

**Summary:** Sasori loves his undying art, but he loves eternity more. A closer look at the battle between Sasori and Chiyo, Deidara centric.

His blood is cold, congealed when he returns.

He will not find his ring; he knows, because he can feel the residues of foreign chakra brushing against his skin, and Zetsu is anything if not cautious (a bipolar madman, perhaps, but never careless.)

There is nothing left but fallen debris in this sea of rock, and Sasori is a strange sight of blood and wounds and twisted limbs, his parents lying peacefully to his side like a photo of a carefully wrought family reunion, staged even in his death. There are his puppets (his oh so proud collection) littered in the battlefield and Deidara finds it strangely comforting to see the Sandaime lying askew—

(even the strongest will fall —)

—in a mass of broken wood and dead, metal sand, nothing but a carcass of his former glory.

But perhaps it is nothing to do with the apparent chaos in the vicinity – a stark contrast to the order the sand-nin had always insisted upon – but more with the wide eyed look of apparent disinterest upon his former partner's face, vacant even at death; like he had been no more than one of his prided puppets himself, dispensable at the merest of whims and disposable if the occasion called for it. He was empty, and thus this was not death – but merely a passing, a sort of rite that simply brought him one step closer to his eternity, to his death

(for death, the great equalizer, is anything if not eternity in a moment—)

and closer to the art that he so craved.

Sasori had not been as infallible as he would have hoped. Deidara lowers his hand, wiggles it under the sand-nin's shoulder and glides it across the expanse of his smooth (wooden) skin until he feels the sticky pool of blood and the tip of the sword, one of the twin strikes that must have bled him till he could no longer bleed – the organ has long ceased in its beating, in distant resignation to its fate and ever so faithful to his masters wishes. Sasori was no fool; Zetsu was anything if not cautious but Sasori had always been painfully methodical, even in death-

Deidara could only for a moment think that Sasori had wanted this just as much as he wanted eternity

(without death his eternity was yet incomplete)

for life had meant nothing to him. Life was transient, and like everything else (love and ties and his breath on the stone-nin's neck) transience is not beauty-

(Sasori had always been painfully, painfully meticulous-)

–but death is.

Sasori is no more than a tangle of metal and wood and red, silky hair, merely a broken puppet among the many, and Deidara thinks that perhaps Sasori had never meant to stay. He could have, and there would be the question of art and destruction and long discussions on explosions and beauty - but then again, there is death.

_(He who loves death shall step content into the realm of oblivion-)_

The rocks lay silent in this battlefield. The earth is moving. Time is moving.

Deidara allows one fleeting smirk – a twisted contraption of feral challenge – for he knows when he arrives upon his death, the sand-nin will be waiting. Because as much as he had loved his puppets, as much as he had wanted to live forever in the realm of the living–

He had always wanted eternity more.

_(For men have died to enter a better kingdom.)_

_Death was in that poisonous wave,  
And in its gulf a fitting grave  
For him who thence could solace bring  
To his lone imagining-  
Whose solitary soul could make  
An Eden of that dim lake._

_- _The Lake, Edgar Allan Poe

**A/N: **Goodness, it's been ages since I last wrote. This popped into my mind a few hours back, and I had to put it on paper. It's a different take on how I usually perceive Sasori, with just a taste of insanity and depravity that was truly very interesting to write – his crazed love for art and his relationship with Deidara really allows for a lot of thought, and this is what came about. This is set after the battle between Chiyo and Sasori, and the subsequent musings of Deidara. And as an added bonus, interpret that SasoDei relationship at will. ;D

Happy reading!


	3. flores para los muertos

**Title:** flores para los muertos

**Rating:** T

**Characters:** Ino, Deidara

**Pairing: **Mild InoDei

**Summary:** Ino doesn't love flowers for their beauty. She envies them. A contemplation on the aesthetics of eternal beauty. Mild InoDei.

Ino doesn't love flowers for their beauty. She envies them.

Her hands are tender and her touch is swift, snipping broken buds and withering appendages will a skilled hand, but the intent is not kind nor was it meant to be. She is passionless in her craft, and she prepares each bloom with the precarious care that has nothing to do with affection and everything to do with ambition. She dresses them like one preparing the dead, rubbing loving fingers over velvet skin and sheer, pale lipstick over its now glossy stalk. When she is finished, the roses are their fresh, vivacious red and the lilies are dressed in white and the baby's breath sigh in the moist air, bathing in the mist that coats their stems and bask them in its dewy glow. She does not do this out of love, oh no.

She does it out of envy.

* * *

The first time she had met him, the blonde had struck her as nothing out of the ordinary, a civilian that smelled faintly of the clay that littered the various valleys of their rival village. It didn't smell strange when the odor emanated from him, and she thought it had something to do with the gleam in his eye and the clenched hands that he refused to unclasp. He was an artist, or so he said.

She believed him.

"Your flower fell." He said, gesturing towards the rosebud that laid prostate at her feet, a beautiful though dead demonstration of what had been alive and vivacious the moment before. At the tinkle of the bell, she had been startled enough for her scissors to slip and for the tragedy to occur. Ino did not bend to pick it up, so he did. "Sorry."

"It's fine," she said, opening her hands to catch the rose as he dropped it in her palm.

The stranger – visitor, artist, whichever – blinked his innocuous blue eyes up to her face, and she almost believed his apology genuine. It was too bad she too often employed the same tactic. There was only the likeliness to blame – they even had the same silky, blonde hair, pony tail and all.

"You don't look upset," he commented. His artist's fingers drifted across a nearby orchid, brushing its pale, violet blossom, and for a moment Ino though he was going to crush it. But he didn't, and the kunoichi breathed a small sigh of relief (or regret, she couldn't tell.)

"I'm not," she said truthfully, "In fact, I'm glad."

She could almost hear his visible perk at her thought. "Oh?" He didn't look at her when he said this, opting to move on to the batch of sunflowers that seemed to glow under his attention. They had unfurled under the crisp, morning sunlight only moments before, and Ino imagined them murmuring in content under his affections. "Why do you say that?" he asked.

Funny, she had expected a more flustered response to her blatant melancholy. Most would have run by now, but she paid it no thought, opting instead to continue her trimming. "People don't remember beauty," A few snips. More severed, leafy appendages. "Because we all forget after a while. Better to die when you're young, when everyone still remembers you for your face." She stopped to admire her handiwork, wondering all the while what had struck her to talk so unabashedly before him. Maybe it had been his artist's hands, or the brief flash of killing intent that had left just as quickly as it came when he held the orchid, she couldn't tell. But just as fisherman knew another from their trade at the merest of whiff of the wind, she knew a friendly soul when she saw one.

The other blonde peered at her handiwork, whistling when he took in all its glory. "You need a bit of red, here," he pointed out, watching in satisfaction when Ino paused to look over her half-done piece before nodding and adding another fresh bloom. "Beauty within death," he slid his baby blue gaze her way, "What if you could be beautiful for eternity, yeah? Would you want that?"

He knew the answer; she could feel it in his lilting tone, from the way he seemed to focus his attention to her face and clench his hands on the edge of the table. "No," she answered at length.

"No?"

She sniffed. "There is nothing beautiful about living forever."

"And why do you say that?" He probed, relentless despite her blasé reply.

This man's surely a weird one, Ino thought irrationally (as if the day hadn't been strange enough) and for some odd reason, it felt as if she had fallen short of his expectations. He was expected a tirade; she had none. "Maybe," she amended, "But maybe it's time, or the lack, thereof. But people remember beauty more when it's gone. Like fireworks." She added in an afterthought.

She had been expecting a blank stare, an incredulous glance, or a small nod of agreement. But she certainly had not expected the wild, elated grin that spread across her visitor's pale, handsome features. "Like an explosion?" he asked hopefully.

The blonde pondered the suggestion. "You could say so," Ino replied offhandedly, placing a rose into the fray of wild buds and colorful splashes of colored petals. They stayed in companionable silence for a while, him with his doodling and her with her flowers, and truth be told it was neither an uncomfortable silence nor a particularly acquainted one. It was merely silence shared between two who understood. It was a rarity to find those of their kind, and they both knew it.

"You have really nice hair," he said, breaking the quiet, "What do you use?"

She'd been asked that question so many times that she didn't even bat an eyelash when she replied. "Rose water."

"Hmm." He hummed, and then, as if to reassure himself, "So there's no beauty in dying?" Ino rearranged the flowers. Blue, red, yellow, white. White, red, yellow, blue.

"Yes and no. I certainly as hell don't want to take a long time getting there, though." Flipping her blonde hair behind her back, she rolled up her sleeves in preparation for the repotting. "If you die young, you might even be able to choose the timing."

At that, he smiled his buttery, mellow, sunshine yellow smile.

* * *

He left, not soon after, with his number scribbled hastily on a scrap piece of paper and a 'call me!' written in wild, looping letters. And beside it had been the rose, still beautiful and young and freshly dead, and she found she didn't mind his company. She was like a fisherman, and she knew one of her trade when she smelled one. He positively reeked of killing intent.

Her flowers bloomed in succession and she smelled always of their natural perfume, but she did not love them for their beauty. They would die, soon after, and she found she envied them for their lacking longitivity.

There was no beauty in dying, but there was beauty in death.

On another piece of paper she had found another scrawled note, this time hosting a quote in his lilting handwriting. 'Flores para los muertos', it read. _Flowers for the dead._

She imagined his grin and almost smiled, stashing the message in her coat. So he had thought so highly of her.

She was almost flattered.

**A/N: **Inspired by firefly's fic, _Caught You on the Flip Side_. Could be a sister one-shot to the _beauty in eternity_, and cookies to whoever guesses where the title's from (not you, eliska. |D) The InoDei similarities are apparent in everything from their appearances and, I suppose, to their mentalities; a little fic to sate my burgeoning obsession with this pairing, so I guess you'll be seeing more of this in my writing. :D I had a lot of fun writing all the dialogue, and hopefully it didn't come through too awkwardly, with the ideas and whatnot.

Thanks for reading!


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